Home-Start Norfolk is aiming to raise £50,000 to enable it to continue its work in the face of rising demand and reduced funding - a campaign which Ms Goddard is backing.

The talk show host has swapped Norfolk for New York, but has been a patron and advocate of the charity for 20 years.

She said: “Home-Start Norfolk provides a vital service. But if it remains under-funded and under-resourced where do parents turn?

“They are left to struggle on, which has the very real potential of damaging the children’s mental health too.

“Home-Start Norfolk volunteers help to keep families together

“Through weekly home visits, trust and friendship is created, parents feel they can talk openly, tackle problems together and start to turn their lives around.

“Importantly, it’s not just parents who benefit who benefit from Home-Start Norfolk support.

“The more stressed and isolated a parent might feel, the more children become stressed. If an adult feels scared and anxious then so does the child.

“We know that constantly being in this state in early childhood has an immensely negative effect on ongoing mental health and, this is, all too often, passed down to the next generation.

“This destructive cycle has to be broken, and that’s where Home-Start Norfolk makes the biggest impact.”

She urged people to donate to the charity’s fundraising campaign, saying it helped to “create a positive mental health for the county’s future generations.”

Calling on 5pc of Norfolk to donate just £1, the ‘5pc for under 5s’ campaign aims to raise £50,000 so the charity can increase the number of families it supports from 79 to more than 130 and provide up to 1,500 extra voluntary hours of support a year.